


S.H.I.E.L.D.: Insurrection

by AstridV, Matarreyes



Category: Agents of S.H.I.E.L.D. (TV)
Genre: Fanart, Gen, Grant Ward Deserved Better, Kara Palamas (mentioned), Meta, Metafiction, SHIELD vs Ward, illustrated fanfic, phil coulson - Freeform
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-07-12
Updated: 2015-07-15
Packaged: 2018-04-09 00:01:38
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 4
Words: 9,950
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/4325928
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/AstridV/pseuds/AstridV, https://archiveofourown.org/users/Matarreyes/pseuds/Matarreyes
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>After resolving the Inhumans conflict and dealing with Skye's dad, SHIELD runs into unexpected trouble.<br/></p>
            </blockquote>





	1. Cover Art

**Author's Note:**

> Story by Matarreyes, art by AstridV  
> Special thanks to Athelassa, Zoroark and Smalltowngirl for beta reading and providing valuable insight.


	2. Carved Memories

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> “I thought it might be in my best interest to find an exit that wouldn’t end with, you know, my brain erased.”

 

 

The last appointment was a family of six and their spaniel with spread out, untreatable lymphoma. The poor thing was limping and in pain, and hadn't been put down sooner only because the family had been waiting for the oldest kid to fly home to say good bye. Good byes had been said, doggy had been given plenty of tasty treats and an injection, and that had been it for the day.

Dr. Calvin Winslow wasn't in any hurry to leave his office. His modest clinic was shaping to truly become a magical place, and nobody was waiting for him to come back to his little suburban condo. He wouldn't call himself lonely, very far from it. He might have crossed the half century mark age wise but he was healthy, economically comfortable, and not terrible to look at. He donated to the local shelter and neutered their strays. He was vaguely planning on traveling somewhere far and fascinating, for example China. The local community where he'd settled down after his accident was quite welcoming to newcomers, and he had no doubt that he'd have no trouble finding himself a quiet, respectable companion with similar tastes, if he decided to. As of now, he had enough with his little pot of daisies.

The bell at the entrance chimed once, and Cal stepped out of his office knowing that the receptionist was gone already. A thin, freckled faced girl stepped in. She had a heavy threadbare bag on her right shoulder and a pug under her left arm.

"I'm sorry; we are closed for the day. The nearest on call vet would be..." He didn't end the sentence, realizing that the girl seemed to be more interested in him personally than any untimely doggie afflictions. Judging by the put upon look of the animal and the rather careless way she was carrying it, it didn't look like she was the owner.

"Dr. Winslow?" She stuck out a freckled hand for a self assured handshake. "Nice to meet you. Would you have half an hour for me?"

It was an unusual request, but not unusual enough to outright deny it. Cal gestured toward his office, hoping against hope he wasn't about to be ambushed by one of these green activists protesting one thing or another. After Internet, protests were his least favorite thing in the world. Too much noise, too much excitement. And the girl definitely looked like a hipster: designer glasses, high boots, loose blouse, and a frankly suspect number of necklaces. She helped herself to a seat before he could offer her one. The bag went on her knees and the pug under the seat, seemingly forgotten.

"Do you follow criminal news? About trials and prisons and crime investigations?" she asked out of nowhere. Cal shook his head. He didn't watch the news at all. He didn't like to get overexcited. It was bad for his health. "So the name Sebastian Derik doesn't sound familiar to you? The guy who carved freaky symbols into his victims' skins before murdering them?"

"Excuse me, who are you?"

"I'm a member of this group. Name's the Rising Tide." Cal shook his head despairingly. The girl seemed to notice and nodded enthusiastically, not embarrassed at all. "And yes, I know what you're thinking, but we aren't looking to gratuitously stir things up. We work to denounce governmental abuse of authority."

"This is a veterinary clinic," smiled Cal politely. "Nothing shady to be found here."

"Can I tell you the whole story first? The defense attorney of this Carver guy claims he's missing an entire year of his life. Doesn't remember any of the killings. Says that the first thing back he remembers is being held down by some man in black, in a place he's never seen before. Brilliant defense, right? Will really help him to avoid the death row... The not quite funny thing? It all checks out. The police received an anonymous tip and found him all trussed up with a note saying that he was guilty - except not of the murders, but of some random robbery from ten years ago. The guy himself was totally confused - the officers had it all perfectly documented, psychiatrist on duty and so on. They had to look him up in every database. Guess what they found? Sebastian Derik was an ex S.H.I.E.L.D. agent. Ever heard of S.H.I.E.L.D.?"

Cal nodded. Everyone had heard of S.H.I.E.L.D.. They were the world's NSA - needed, hated, revered, feared - opinions like colors, basically. The one thing universally accepted was that it was best to keep as far away as possible from their radar.

"Last record of him working for S.H.I.E.L.D. is right before the memory loss starts. There is a note about a medical leave for extended lung cancer, life expectancy under 6 months. He's healthy as a bull now, and the only scar he has in not on his ribcage. The top of his scull has been completely removed and put back later. You're a doctor..."

"A veterinarian."

"Just take a look."

The girl opened her bag and rummaged through several neatly printed documents with paragraphs underlined in colorful markers. She looked like the perfect college student, had the documents on her lap not contained photos of mutilated bodies and x-rays of skulls. Cal didn't need to be a neurosurgeon to tell that the scars he was shown corresponded with an extensive craniectomy. He also couldn't help but notice that he'd seen similar scars before.

"Here is where it gets even scarier. Not only did the Carver victims - Lewis Seaver, Janice Roberts and two others - all had similar old scars, all had some kind of professional association with S.H.I.E.L.D. and all changed their lives radically a couple of years ago. My theory? S.H.I.E.L.D. got a bunch of terminally ill, desperate employees and ran secret medical experiments on them. Experiments that went so wrong, the subjects lost their identities. S.H.I.E.L.D. apparently didn't even check up on them with any regularity; just let them out into the world. They only noticed that something was wrong after one subject started to kill off others. They hunt the Carver down, but instead of coming clean about whatever shady program with a pompous codename this mess belonged to, they tried to wash their hands of the man. They actually had the gall to ship him to the police for some non-bloody crime he committed before he even joined their ranks. Which doesn't sound like a reassuring recruitment policy for a spy agency, but I digress. The police, who aren't idiots, run a DNA search that matched with samples found on the bodies, and the rest was history."

Cal had never been a conspiracy theory kind of guy. He didn't believe in aliens or exotic women who foresaw the future, but he did have an inquisitive, scientific mind. When pieces clicked into place, it was a sure sign that they belonged together. The girl rummaged in her bag and took out another photo. Cal reached out, but the girl held on.

"Derik is, logically, terrified. Can you imagine waking up one day and being told you committed these terrible murders? We have been trying to help him deal and lend a hand to his attorney, but the only way to definitely prove anything would be to find other people who'd been through the same experience. We aren't a bunch of loonies. We're a big organization, growing bigger every day. Our own people can dig deep into electronic records, and we receive a fair amount of tips as well. The guy who gave me this photo said he was an ex-agent, but when I asked whether he´d been S.H.I.E.L.D. he just smiled and answered that they all look the same from the inside. He made me promise that I´d leave you alone if you didn’t want to talk so... Here I am, waiting for whatever you could tell me."

She allowed Cal to reach for the photo this time. It was, sure enough, a picture of the entrance to his office. She had lucked out on the identification front: Dr. Winslow wasn't as common a name as, say, Dr. Johnson. The girl was eyeing him with a mixture of triumph and expectation. The extravagant glasses and the obviously loaned dog suddenly made an uncomfortable amount of sense. There was only one thing he could tell her, sadly.

"I'm sorry, I don't know why you were pointed to this place. It's true that I have recently been in a car accident that has rendered me somewhat infamously amnesiac. My car had run under a truck, got the top cut cleanly off, took a chunk of the driver's head as well. The local newspaper has written an article, maybe that's why... But I promise you that the worst affliction I had before was a somewhat short fuse, which hopefully wasn't as limiting as to physically rewire my brain - psychiatrists are less bloody and have better results, I'm told. I can also assure you that my worldview and personal convictions would have prevented me from ever associating myself with S.H.I.E.L.D.".

He had expected the girl to scoff and to insist. The fact that she just nodded curtly and started to collect her things went a long way to infuse him with a certain respect. Cal watched wordlessly as the girl struggled with her papers and her animal. The pug, having made itself a cuddly place under the chair, acted even more affronted now than it had before.

"Take him... No, no, take him under your arm like this," he indicated. And then, when the girl was almost out of the door, he suddenly opened his mouth once more. "Have you considered that maybe he consented to the entire thing? That maybe, having one's mind obliterated was the lesser of two evils?"

She nodded while looking back at him very sadly, and it suddenly occurred to Cal that she would have seen the article about his accident, checked the police records. She probably knew more about his accident than him. And she still came to ask the questions.

"He said that to remember any number of bad things would still be better than to remember nothing. That one couldn't lose an entire year of his life and still be himself, that he felt like a completely different person." She went back to the office table and turned the photograph she had left behind. There was a number written on the back. "I would be happy if you called, but I will respect your choice no matter what... Have a nice life, Calvin."

When she was gone Cal placed the photo under his pot with daisies and tried to forget all about it. Forget S.H.I.E.L.D.. Forget the girl and ignore that such an arbitrary power over people's' minds was as scary as it was game changing. He may have been an idealist in his youth, but now he was simply a man who had no memory of several decades of his life. He had lost so much, he was terrified to lose one second more.

He was pissed off, though. More with each passing day. The reasons for it were simple and rather egotistical. He did vaguely remember all his dreams of youth - travel the world, meet fascinating people, settle down, have a family. A wife he'd endlessly pamper and kids he'd tirelessly raise. Girls. He'd dreamed of having baby girl or two. For all he woke up every morning thinking that his little clinic was to be his new magical place, he was starting to wonder if he truly believed that, or if the words just sprung into his mind like a conditioned response. After all, what was exactly so magical about a vet clinic? And yes, he enjoyed his work and the inherent altruism of it, but he was also very devastatingly lonely on a personal level. The more he thought about it, the more he looked at his own circular head scar, the easier he admitted this fact to himself. And he was starting to see how the possibility that once upon a time he hadn't been might well be worth taking a risk. What was lost was lost, but it could be bearable if the family shaped hole inside him stopped being a hole and become a memory.

Several weeks went by, until one day he saw the person he now assumed to be his S.H.I.E.L.D. handler. He was no agent and no super person, but neither was he an idiot. She wasn't even trying to be subtle, waiting for him to leave his office and looking at him directly from across the street. Cal's heart accelerated with uncontrollable fright at first, wondering if his conversation with the Rising Tide girl was about to bring unpleasant consequences, and then - he once again got angry. He thought about how, when writing a prescription, he sometimes found himself issuing human dosages instead of animal ones. How neither peers from his college days, nor friends nor family had been around when he woke up in the hospital after his crash. How sometimes he felt like he was missing something so strongly it scared him, because the clinic was supposed to be his magical... To be enough.

Cal found himself staring, and then crossing the street toward her. The S.H.I.E.L.D. woman was about the same age as the pug girl, young, fresh and beautiful, yet her face immediately closed off in a wary look, and that reaction went a long way to confirm everything he had been fearing.

"I remember you," he told her boldly, half fearing that an unmarked van would stop in front of him and men in black would drag him back to brainwash him a second time.

She swallowed and looked up and down the street, probably checking for witnesses of what she'd assume was about to become a nasty scene. She was afraid of him, he realized. S.H.I.E.L.D. was afraid of him remembering. Yet, somewhat to her credit, she also looked almost sad.

"Do you?"

"Your name is Daisy, right? You have been keeping tabs on me. Or were you worried I meant before?" He was extremely proud of his little rebellion and his double entendre. "I won't lie, I have been trying, but you have done too good a job."

She squirmed at that. As well she should. S.H.I.E.L.D. had utterly destroyed one life, and didn't bother giving him another. No memories to cherish, no people to share a connection with, no past to build upon and no hope for a future. Even the dogs that were put down in the clinic had people come and say goodbye to them.

"At least tell me whether it had been my choice?"

He held his breath, hoping against hope she would whip out one of these handy newish phones and play a video of Dr. Calvin Winslow assuring himself that this had been indeed the better way. That he had had a voice. He was a scientist. He wouldn't need long winded explanations, only a token of good faith. Several short sentences addressing his future distrustful amnesiac would have sufficed.

"It was the best solution," she answered rather sweetly. "You have a chance at a whole new life now. No worries, no baggage."

"So that would be a no."

"You don't need to worry over the details. We'll always look out for you. I'll visit, too. You don't remember it, but I promised that I would."

Cal smiled tentatively at that, and this Daisy person smiled even wider. Literally beamed at him, as if her promise was supposed to mean something to him now. He made a timid good bye gesture and turned around, hairs on the back of his neck standing up. Once home, he gathered together the news articles, his discharge papers and the brain scans. The next morning, in the clinic, he memorized the number before burning down the photo. At afternoon, he made sure to say everyone leaving for the day goodbye. He hoped someone would take good care of his daisies.


	3. The Welcome Wagon

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> “Do you have any idea how hard it was? The sacrifices, the decisions I had to make? Someday, you'll understand."

 

By the time the summer had rolled by, Skye was wishing she had asked anyone at Afterlife just how many Inhumans were there in the world. She had assumed the answer was not many, but now that S.H.I.E.L.D. knew what to look for they were certainly beginning to pop up. Dealing with them and juggling her shiny new super-powered team project was challenging, but Skye was taking Raina's prediction about her role as Inhumans leader very seriously. As such, she took time to interview new additions, advise them to stay under the radar and index them according to the existent guidelines. It wasn't all lost time, though - S.H.I.E.L.D. scientists were trying to purify the inhuman part of the genetic code, and new blood samples were proving to be very handy.

The fifth freshly turned Inhuman Skye managed to identify was a middle aged, thin, mousy-haired man wearing thick glasses. She had first noticed him on a viral footage of a 'spontaneous' destruction of a car that took all of two minutes to go from a new model to a pile of metallic ashes. She later identified him on CCTV footage at a train station, a wagon door decomposing to fine powder under his hands. A quick hack into the traffic cameras allowed her to follow the man to a quiet residential neighborhood - the kind where nobody liked scandals and surprises, which meant she would have to process him before some nosy neighbor discovered the alter ego of one Max Torsten, a 48 years old writer for several obscure scientific magazines, divorced with two children. Skye made a mental note to track them down later. For now, she was glad that they were nowhere close.

She parked Lola on a side street, got hold of the index files and the medic bag that would allow her to take a blood sample and walked up to the cottage. Knocking yielded a faint yell of 'enter' and the realization that the neighborhood was indeed friendly enough that the man didn't bother to lock the door. She followed the invitation and found herself in a living room that in a truly bachelor fashion also doubled as an office.

In person, Max Torsten was even more thin and sour-looking than on CCTV footage. Sleeves rolled up and glasses almost hanging off his nose, he looked more impatient than surprised at Skye's appearance.

"Mr. Torsten, my name is Skye and I am here to help you deal with your powers."

Her strategy for barreling her way into people's lives was to say her preplanned piece as quickly and as self confidently as possible, knowing that taken aback people tended not to question her or her deeds.

"Powers," echoed the man with distaste. The tips of his fingers were smeared in soot. He noticed her noticing, and seemingly decided that negation of the obvious was senseless. "How did you find me?"

"Media sites love gratuitous destruction," Skye grinned, trying to put him at ease. Upset Inhumans made for upsetting headlines.

"That was only 24 hours ago."

"We have some cool scanning software." This part was best to take care of swiftly. "I am a S.H.I.E.L.D. agent. I am in charge of detecting and helping out freshly turned Inhumans like you and me. You don't need to hide from me. I know exactly what you're going through."

“Inhuman?"

"That's what we call ourselves."

Another block of background information was delivered as quickly. Skye even talked a little about her own power in order to get the man to trust her. Talking about how scared she had been until she understood how it all worked and that she wouldn’t be kept caged forever by S.H.I.E.L.D.. That part wasn´t very flattering though, and she promptly changed the subject to the origin of Inhumans. She could feel that the man was more interested in that anyway. He wasn't very subtle, that with a look he threw in the direction of a photo featuring a preteen girl and a chubby toddler.

"So this is a genetic condition?"

"More like a genetic potential. Something needs to trigger the transitioning. Then a thousand years worth of evolution take place inside your body in a single moment."

"Millions."

"What?"

"Millions of years worth of evolution. The human race was exactly the same a thousand years ago, and will remain the same thousand years from now." Skye exhaled another slow, calming breath and reminded herself that she had only spent a week at Afterlife, and nobody except Lincoln had been particularly interested in explaining things to an irregularly turned upstart. "What kind of hereditary pattern does it hold? Dominant, recessive, stable or unstable mutation?"

"Sorry, that's a little too technical for me. We are studying it, there is a DNA database that will help answer all this stuff and more."

The man nodded slowly.

"And what exactly does S.H.I.E.L.D. want with me, miss...?"

"Agent. Skye. To help you control it, first and foremost."

"Well, as far as I could determine, I am now able to catalyze oxidative reactions, making them happen much quicker than expected. It isn't as much destruction as extreme rot. It happens by touch, doesn't work remotely, and cannot be reversed. My inner state has a strong influence on my degree of control; hence I letting my colleagues and family know I will be retreating to a secluded resort for the foreseeable future to contemplate this development. Said resort is already booked - I received confirmation half an hour ago. The only questions I have right now are about causality and triggering, but you don't seem to know the answer yourself. So while I'm thankful for the sentiment, if that is all, I have a bag to pack."

Skye had to admit that was a pretty comprehensive checklist for dealing with new volatile powers. It would be commendable if the man wasn't very obviously using it as an excuse to be rid of her. Between the pedantries, the fact that he was twice her age and the several questions that had revealed she didn't really know much of anything Inhuman related, she could tell the man wasn't very impressed. At times like these, she was glad to be a part of a well oiled organization with standard policies nobody was free to ignore.

"Not quite all. I still need to fill out the index files and take a blood sample."

The man sighed very unhappily but he did extend his hand, and for a moment Skye thought if he was offering his wrist for blood extraction then and there. She then realized that he expected her to give him the documents she had already prepared on the table for easy access.

"I'm sorry, these are confidential. I'll ask the questions and write down the answers, this is how it works." Something in his face suggested that this still wasn't exactly what he had meant with the gesture, but Skye was done playing the guessing game. She was becoming increasingly distrustful of the continuing evasions.

That suspicion intensified when the man got hold of the little medical device that allowed an untrained person to take a blood sample and pretty much melted it down while pretending to take a look.

"Sorry," he muttered, shaking his hand while avoiding eye contact. "This conversation has made me a bit nervous. Could we do this another time, please?"

His heart rate was up, and a thin sheet of perspiration was forming on his temples. Skye's skin started to crawl. She thought back on the decomposed chassis of the car and wondered what this man could do to a human body. She didn't plan on finding out.

"I will be back tomorrow." She answered while staying up. He had said his power didn't work remotely, but he could have lied. If he made any wrong steps in her direction, she would unleash her own power on him.

"Does S.H.I.E.L.D. work on Sundays?" He smiled nervously, sweating even more. "I'd have thought governmental employees had weekends off. On Monday, if you please."

Skye had been completely on edge by the time she had left. It was telling that her heartbeat was more accelerated after that conversation than after taking any number of shots at live targets. She holed up in a hotel and contacted Coulson to reassure him that she hadn't misplaced Lola and also to inform him that her newfound "friend" was shady as a rainforest. The more she thought about it, the more chances she saw that the man was Hydra.

On Sunday evening, having come up with a spotless background check and therefore even more worried than before, she decided to call her backup.

"Let me get this straight. You don't trust him because he doesn't trust you? How is that even a surprise? S.H.I.E.L.D. doesn't have the most stellar of reputations." She hated how reasonable Lincoln could be sometimes, and how salty he was when forced to miss an apparently exciting rotation on such a short notice. He had been so openly reticent that Skye had to jokingly threaten to send a team of Level 7 agents after him if he didn't move his skinny ass and help her. It wasn't that she feared Max Torsten's powers, she told herself. She just needed an asset on her side willing to confirm the man that men in black weren't all that bad, on the off chance he wasn't Hydra after all.

"You could be on my team permanently, you know," she said. Her vouching for Lincoln despite his brief foray into the evil camp helped to get the offer approved by Coulson, and it stung a little that her friend had been openly dismissive of the opportunity.

"I didn't go to Medical School to become a weapon. My aspiration is to heal people, not rough them up."

"This isn't about using our powers as weapons!"

"Then why does it even matter whether your team is powered or not?"

The neighborhood looked very busy on the Monday morning. About a dozen people were hanging around the house and looking grim, though Skye saw no evidence of any public display of powers that would have given the man away. Apart from Max Torsten, a solemn and elegantly clothed woman with a kid holding her hand was waiting for Skye inside. There was also a tweed of a girl in a school uniform, glaring at the procedures from the sofa. The fact that there were children present went a long way to reassure Skye that this was no Hydra plot, though the last person in the house - a middle aged man in a nondescript suit - did seem suspect somehow.

He was the first to zero in on Skye when she set foot inside.

"I'm guessing this the S.H.I.E.L.D. agent you told me about?" The suit extended his hand for a self assured, professional handshake. "Mr. Gill, of the Gill MacNamara Law Firm. Might I see some kind of identification?"

She had a handful of different ID cards in her pocket, from owner of a nursery school to IT specialist to martial arts instructor. The man studied the S.H.I.E.L.D. ID for a while, much more thorough than any other person Skye had ever shown it to.

"You're right," he finally turned to Max Torsten. "No full name on official badge in highly irregular, though I'm sure it will prove to be a minor problem."

"I'm sorry," interrupted Skye. "Why are you here and what kind of problem are we talking about?"

"I am here to guarantee that Mr. Torsten's civil rights are protected during his interactions with your agency. As of yet, my client has a case against S.H.I.E.L.D. for harassment and racial discrimination. Though the claim is solid enough to demand reparation, we are willing to let things slide on the assumption you will abstain from all further contact with him and his family."

Skye could have punched the pompous self satisfied idiot right then and there. She had never been fond of lawyers and their twisted ways of shaping the reality.

"Your client melted a car with only his touch. Did he tell you that?"

"Max has already paid for the car and for the damage to public areas," chimed in the wispy ex-wife. "Our family is well respected, responsible citizens."

Skye really didn't want to discuss the social standing of these people. Property damage wasn't the reason of her being there, after all.

"Keeping an eye on gifted individuals is standard procedure. S.H.I.E.L.D. has been doing it for years."

"What S.H.I.E.L.D. has been doing in the past doesn't interest me. Fact is, a new group of individuals with a genetic predisposition to accelerated genomic changes after exposition to an undetermined environmental factor has been discovered. This is what you told Mr. Torsten during your first interview with him. After informing him that he belonged to this category, you proceeded to notify him he was to be catalogued in a specific database and tested genetically. Is this correct?"

"Yes," said Skye at the same time as Lincoln behind her mouthed a soft "no".

"Can I see the information sheet and the informed consent paperwork my client is expected to sign in regard to this procedure?"

"The what?"

"The informed consent for sensitive personal data collection and the DNA databank."

Skye did a double take on that, especially since she realized that Lincoln was trying to get her attention - a medical student would know these things. In all her dealings with gifted nobody had tried to oppose her by bringing in a lawyer to sprout legal gibberish at her. Every gifted she had encountered before had submitted to S.H.I.E.L.D. supervision meekly enough. And when she herself had been there, though she had been at first terrified that somebody would find out, it all turned out well in the end.

"People with powers need regulated supervision to avoid being dangerous to others!" S.H.I.E.L.D. hadn't always been friendly and helpful to her, but any other option would probably have been much worse.

"How are they dangerous?" asked the preteen from the sofa. Unlike her mother, she seemed downright interested in the discussion and not at all afraid of Skye. Skye wondered whether she also had powers. The fact that the family brought her there could mean something. She'd have to be indexed as well. Considering how the things were, Skye would probably wait with the blood sample.

"Some are stronger than any normal person," she explained carefully. She really didn't want to say anything offending about the child's father. "Some are quicker. Some can control fire or destroy things or be at several places at once."

"A strong person isn't dangerous," said the kid. "Or a quick person. A bad person is dangerous. Someone who wants to hurt others, start a fight, steal."

"Yes, very fair point, Julie," said the mother, visibly uneasy with her daughter's outspokenness. "Would you please take your brother, go outside and tell Mrs. Dobson that everything is fine here? This is taking a bit long, I'm sure everyone is worried."

Now that Skye was listening, she realized that the small gathering had grown much louder meanwhile. In between indistinct shouts she could now hear anti-S.H.I.E.L.D. slogans. The Torsten family was indeed proving to be well respected and able to gather a good deal of public support for its Inhuman member.

"You have a sharp kid, Max," chimed in the lawyer after the children were gone. He then turned to Skye once again. "So, to answer little Julie, is there going to be a threshold beyond which strong people will be deemed dangerously strong? Is a gifted with corrosive powers more dangerous than someone with a bottle of hydrochloric acid in his hand? It's rather easy to come by in our internet age. Are the Inhumans genetically predisposed to moral depravity, to be singled out and preemptively surveyed? Will S.H.I.E.L.D. be giving out little signs after their registration to wear on their sleeves, so 'normal' humans would know them for what they are?"

Now that implication was beyond offensive. Skye felt her blood boil.

"What?! No! That has nothing to do with what S.H.I.E.L.D. is doing! They're working to keep people like us hidden precisely to protect us from being discriminated or worse, hunted down and experimented on! "

"How exactly will being treated like a dirty secret protect us against discrimination?" snorted Torsten. "How will we be able to speak up if we're hunted down, if the world won't even know that we exist?"

"So what do you want?" Skye threw her hands up in frustration. "You don't want to be on the Index, you don't want to be kept secret, what do you actually want?"

"A good question at last, Agent Skye. We want to decide our own future, well away from anyone, pretending to dictate our lives and to teach us fear and shame. We want to be visible and recognized and judged by what we do, not what others fear we could end up doing. And if someone does try to strike against us, we want S.H.I.E.L.D. to earn its keep and protect us. Publicly. Like any other citizen, weak or strong, fast or slow. Or aren't we all equal before the law?"

"Because if we aren't, my firm will be forever open for people to come forth and denounce abuse, past or present," added the lawyer. "Even yours and your friend's, if you so wished."

"It's OK," said Lincoln from behind Skye. "Well, not really, but these blood samples S.H.I.E.L.D. got from me are a lost cause. They'll never admit to anything."

Skye was contemplating how to make a strategic retreat without making it look like she was making running away, but then she looked back at Lincoln, speechless and betrayed.

"You almost died, we saved you!"

"Saving me didn't give you any rights to my body. What? I didn't protest because I was virtually locked up in the middle of your base. I did say that S.H.I.E.L.D. was doing exactly the same thing Hydra had, but your boss dismissed that. I get that you see Coulson as your family and that he in turn makes exception upon exception to accommodate you and your gift, but he treats everyone else very differently. He's actually pretty scary in that aloof, faithful company man way."

Skye turned around and fled outside after that. The neighborhood gathering was in full swing, complete with several girls who must have been the daughter's school friends giving out cookies and lemonade and looking extremely pleased with their display of social awareness. Several phones went up when she appeared, recording her walk of shame. Some of the looks Skye received from the crowd made her glad that the lawyer had also made his way outside. Julie left her little brother down and came running to him.

"Thank you for coming," she said, all but hugging the man. "People have been looking for ways to help us, but Dad said S.H.I.E.L.D. had powered people doing its bidding. People who'd use their powers as weapons in a fight. He was really scared all weekend."

"The person who’s pointed me here said secret agencies were very good at reaching out to normal people who felt alone and different, giving them a place to belong and molding them into soldiers... S.H.I.E.L.D., Hydra, doesn’t really matter. There has been a similar case in my own family, you know? Which is why, when someone has a problem like your Dad, it's important for everyone to band together and show them that, whatever happens, they're not alone. My nephew Donald used to call it the welcome wagon."


	4. Closure

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> “Pick a side, Ward.”  
> “Oh, I have, don’t worry.”

 

It was the perfect storm. The congressional inquiry into why Coulson had chosen not to collaborate with the authorities after Hydra rose and spent a year running away would have been possible to deal with. After being seen rescuing a town from destruction, S.H.I.E.L.D. had a lot of political goodwill, enough even to waive away a bloody attack on an Air Force base and a kidnapping of a Brigadier General. A more recent inquiry, this one from the Food and Drug Administration regarding medical experimentation happening at S.H.I.E.L.D. facilities without an overview from an ethical commission of any kind, was trickier to argue away, especially since pressure groups were about to gain permission for exhumations and renewed autopsies of all known Carver victims. Meanwhile, a series of ads for the Gill MacNamara Law Firm was running on several channels, inviting all hiding powered people to come out, form local support groups and denounce any instance of prejudice and institutional abuse. Some were heartfelt and funny, like the one featuring a Thor imitator waiving a fake Mjolnir around, talking about how 'worthy or unworthy', and not 'human or inhuman', should be the measuring stick of the new world. Some were downright uncomfortable, like the newspaper version with a picture of Donnie Gill grinning proudly at an abstract ice structure rising from his palms and a legend that made everyone on Coulson's team look away.

Weaponized in S.H.I.E.L.D. prison. Brainwashed under S.H.I.E.L.D. watch. Killed by a S.H.I.E.L.D. agent.

"This kind of snowballing happens more often than you would think, but mostly it's just silly memes". Skye had been a great help tracking social media sites and trying to prevent the growing popular indignation from spreading any further. "People rarely rally together on big important topics. I used to love when something like that happened. Pieces solving a puzzle." She smiled a little nostalgic smile. "Remember the 084 mission in Peru? They had a political uprising organized through a Twitter campaign while we were there."

"And I'm going to tell you exactly what I told you then. If this gets out of hand I might need you to put the public on the wrong scent. We can't have everyone doubting S.H.I.E.L.D. again."

Fortunately, Skye had become a trusted S.H.I.E.L.D. agent in the two years that had passed since and offered none of her inappropriate snarky comments. Coulson happened to remember the Peru mission all too well, and not precisely because it had been the team's first mission. May, Skye, Ward and Fitzsimmmons had put aside their differences, almost blew up the Bus and Coulson had boasted smugly to Commandant Camilla Reyes that his team was just that good. Reyes was supposed to get a rather lengthy sentence for trying to steal a 084 weapon back to Peruvian government, but once it became public knowledge that S.H.I.E.L.D. didn't honor the international agreements either she didn't stay in prison for long. One of the side effects of the Hydra uprising had been the reveal that Project Slingshot, supposed to be sending dangerous items confiscated all over the world to the sun, had always been an elaborate farce. Camilla appeared before United Nations testifying that instead of acting as a worldwide peacekeeping force S.H.I.E.L.D. had been secretly hoarding weapons of mass destruction, and since she knew Phil personally her short but succinct "Coulson Lies" spread like a fire.

The whole Peruvian 084 fiasco wouldn't prove so serious - everything that had happened before Hydra could be explained away through its insidious influence - were it not for the fact that Coulson was still in possession of that artifact, as well as a number of other items formally too powerful to belong to a single force. Bambino had come in handy several times already and was overall the coolest toy a S.H.I.E.L.D. Director could hope for, but once in a very rare while Phil couldn't help but remember that its development through the infamous Phase 2 had filled Captain America with disappointment and anger.

Worse were things regarding the mysterious Kree stone. In a twist that managed to blindside him despite everything that had been going on, several countries announced that they wouldn't allow S.H.I.E.L.D. to have the sole custody of it. Recent unfortunate encounters with Inhumans had been cited, which made Coulson suspect one of the rogue Afterlife dwellers had to be involved. China officials were arguing that S.H.I.E.L.D. was delegitimized to control an object able to kill off an arguably bigger number of world citizens than Project Insight ever hoped for, and no amount of reminding them that Project Insight had been misused by Hydra was helping Coulson argue his case.

He strongly suspected that all the recent troubles had a single origin, but didn't have the heart to insist that Skye searched even deeper than she already was. Her father’s recent disappearance and the inquiry into TAHITI were weighting heavily on her. She went as far as to tearfully confess that she didn't realize that the procedure involved opening a person's scull and physically rewriting cortical connections, and Coulson hoped she never learned that it was performed on conscious subjects and felt so terrible that he had been begging to be allowed to die. Truth be told, the procedure hadn't been as much about giving Cal a shot at a better life as about getting him off their hands. Nobody wanted to keep Skye's father locked in their own basement forever. Passing him to the authorities to stand trial wasn't an option as it would have given away too much sensitive information. TAHITI had seemed the easiest option - except now the man was in the wind, probably holding a grudge. The lack of direct news about him suggested that he hadn't gone on a violent rampage, but that too was a mixed blessing. Some of the questions posed by the FDA suggested that he was channeling his rage into collaborating with them instead.

After two weeks of putting out political and legal fires Coulson finally decided to take a weekend off. He spent it at May's, or better said at Andrew Garner's, far away from the uneasy buzz that permeated the Playground. The three of them spent most of the time sitting together in the living room, discussing strategy. It was peaceful and reassuring, and reminded Coulson of his first months as the Director when May had been his only solace against the carving madness closing down on him.

"You're going to be asked uncomfortable questions. Having simple, direct answers is the best." Andrew had been another corner stone then, his no-nonsense approach very refreshing. It was still as reassuring now as it used to be then, with the psychiatrist sipping coffee in his living room instead of writing down notes at a hidden meeting point. "You should stick to mentioning the specific steps you have taken to cleanse S.H.I.E.L.D. from Hydra. I'll give you an example. If you are asked whether the experimentation on gifted individuals in the Sandbox and at the Fridge was exclusively Hydra-led and happened unbeknownst to any loyal S.H.I.E.L.D. personnel, are you going to answer affirmatively?"

"Of course," said Coulson.

"Which doesn't stand even the slightest scrutiny. Unless all personnel, from janitor to director, were Hydra, someone would have noticed that certain gifted prisoners were taken aside day after day. It's obvious that both S.H.I.E.L.D. and Hydra knew of the experiments and wholeheartedly approved. Which is why Steve Rogers didn't want S.H.I.E.L.D. cleansed of Hydra, he wanted both organization destroyed together. Your best course of action would be to avoid discussing anything that didn't happen under your direct command, and talk exclusively about the steps you have taken to prevent further abuse. For example, have the internal manuals been updated in order to expressly forbid the experimentation? Has 'these who can't be brought in will be taken out' policy been revoked?"

May seemed slightly upset at the question, looking at Andrew in a moment of wordless communication. Their renewed tightness shouldn't have surprised Coulson - they had always been a good pair. He felt a pang of some unnamed emotion thinking about his own relationship with May, more and more frayed due to the requirements of his directorial position.

"We have been running against the clock on minimal personnel," he told Andrew. "I have been temporarily affected by the GH serum, S.H.I.E.L.D. has been fighting Hydra, dealing with rogue factions inside its own base. Bureaucracy hasn't been my first concern. Some steps were taken, though. I got rid of access Levels..."

"And proceeded to withdraw all info from everyone, as opposed to some info from lower Level agents," laughed Andrew before softening the blow with a smile. "Melinda told me a little about it, I fear. But you're right. It's not about bureaucrats and manuals. It's about the fact that when I talked to Agent Skye, the policy on gifted she had been enforcing didn't sound any different than the one that had been in place since long ago. I also saw the place you were using as your prison, that underground vault. Are you aware that complete isolation is considered a form of psychological torture under the United Nations? Even people in solitary confinement are given an hour a day to see the sun. I hope you aren't planning on putting anyone in there except for some short hours, or you'll quickly find yourself calling me for an acute intervention. A couple of weeks alone in that place and people are guaranteed to start running at the walls. "

They didn't speak more of it, and lunch proved to be a pleasant affair. A Quinjet sent to bring Coulson back to the Playground arrived shortly after they were finished.

"Good luck out there," said May, her voice unusually warm. "Remember, this is nothing new. We have been dealing with Hydra for decades, and this scheming will be unmasked soon. The council backs you, and nobody doubts your integrity."

Coulson just nodded. He was hoping May decided to report back to duty soon, but didn't want to pry. He missed having someone firmly in his corner come the UN, the FDA, hell or high water. He settled down in the back of the jet with a tablet as they took flight, quick and smooth, and for a while managed to enjoy the moments of peace before the storm. Some time had passed before he looked up from the tablet. He immediately lunged for his firearm, only to remember that he wasn't carrying one on his day off.

Ward was leaning against the door leading to the empty cockpit, jet flying on autopilot. Coulson controlled his impulse to seek a gun and wondered at his chances were he to lunge at the man instead. Not very good, he could tell. Ward's arms were crossed at his chest and he wasn't packing any visible weapons, but that didn't mean anything where the man was concerned.

"What do you want?" asked Coulson levelly, determined not to show an ounce of fear before the man.

"Not much," Ward all but grinned at the not quite concealed anger in his voice. "Just passing by, checking if my efforts are being duly appreciated."

Everything fell into place at once. Ward had knowledge of TAHITI and Cal, of Inhumans and Skye being one of them. Of Donnie Gill and the fact that S.H.I.E.L.D. had known before shooting him that he had been brainwashed.

"It was you. You did this!"

"Well, I did point a lot of right people to a lot of hidden places. Made nothing up, though. No additives at all, all 100% natural, juicy S.H.I.E.L.D.-made mess."

"I knew Hydra was behind this," seethed Coulson, bristling at the humorless laugh that had escaped the former specialist at his words. "Does this seem funny to you?"

"Watching you flail and blame Hydra for all your troubles? Sure thing, yes. I have a riddle for you, Director. This one hasn't made the news yet. Four people storm a facility called the Guest House, looking for a formula that can save one extremely important life. In their quest they unblinkingly extinguish two fairly unimportant ones. Two of these people are S.H.I.E.L.D., two are secretly Hydra. Now, who do you think ordered the attack?"

Coulson felt a heavy weight settle in his stomach. If anybody asked him, he wouldn't hesitate to say that no life was more valuable than another... But if Skye was dying again, he wouldn't even need to think. He'd hold a machine gun and lead Trip, Garrett, and Ward down the Guest House elevator shaft in seconds.

His realization was met with a pair of laughing brown eyes.

"How does the business of telling the world that big bad Hydra made you do all these terrible things going? Or was it the GH serum? It's always one or the other with you, I've honestly lost count."

"Is this another twisted vengeance plan?"

"Several courts seem to consider it justice, but everything I do is bound to be twisted and wrong, is it not? I mean, you killed your coworkers, Skye gunned down a desperate brainwashed kid, Simmons disintegrated an unsuspecting asset. And then there is Bobbi Morse, whose worst sin wasn't betraying a fellow agent, but rather failing to move one finger to help her afterwards. I wonder how often Hydra Head of Security would cross paths with Whitehall's right hand? Daily, probably. Was organizing an extraction way too complicated? Was Kara not important enough for Morse to take the risk? But then, what made Agent Simmons more valuable than Agent Palamas in S.H.I.E.L.D.'s eyes?"

"Don't you dare talk about Bobbi after what you did to her!" shouted Coulson. He wasn't intimidated by Ward and his falsely reasonable discourse. He was planning on humoring the rogue agent until he could find an opening and bring him down, but to have the man implying dishonorable things about Bobbi made his blood boil.

"Yeah, about that." Ward scrunched his nose in distaste. "It's been over a month, and I'm still at a loss as to why I would ever do that. I know it sounds weird, but have you heard of any Asgardian sorceresses of late or discovered a mind controlling Inhuman?"

Coulson could only stare. Ward sounded openly frustrated with the question, which didn't make an ounce of sense. He tried to discretely look out of the window to guess where they were headed, wondering how much longer he would need to play this game.

"You wanted to make Bobbi pay for betraying Agent 33," he answered curtly, "failing to understand that sacrificing one for the safety of many is the only right call."

"Not if the one doesn't agree to be sacrificed, but my point is not as much about intent as about execution. Between a bloodthirsty fanatic wielding a knife and a frustrated white collar analyst talking to a newspaper, whom do intelligent agencies fear more? Telling the world how your caring, people friendly organization treated her would have given Kara all the closure in the world. And why fixate exclusively on Morse when she was only one in a long list of S.H.I.E.L.D. agents to mistreat her? Several of your people had perfect opportunities to take Kara back where she belonged and every one of them left her lying around, unconscious. But the person who takes the cake is you, Director. You used her as bait and tossed her into a prison for daring to look for help elsewhere after the 'good' guys had left her behind one too many times. Socking you once in your self righteous face would have been much more satisfying than receiving any amount of confessions from Bobbi Morse. Which brings me to my last point. You see, I didn't win the reputation of being the best since Romanoff by torturing pointless admissions out of people who disagree with me. Nor am I in the business of badly parodying James Bond movies from the sixties. And yet, the only thing lacking in that warehouse was the cat, because as far as over complicated and never quite functioning traps for heroes, the only thing more absurd would be to tie Bobbi to a railway. And my question is, obviously, why. Why would I ever come up with such a stupid and ill advised plan?"

"Isn't it obvious? You're a psycho, nothing you do needs to make sense!"

Ward shifted a little at the outburst and Coulson prepared himself for retribution, but the man only shoved his hands into his pockets and sighed theatrically.

"You keep using that word, I don't think it means what you think it means. Because if you are trying to imply that I'm a psychopath, you should know that such a condition doesn't manifest itself in 30 years olds who have been repeatedly cleared for specialist duty in the past. And if you're wanting to say that I'm psychotic, as in delusional and not in contact with reality, I'll just point out that I'm not the one saying things like it's fine for S.H.I.E.L.D. to use wrong means to the right end, or even that sacrificing a few for the safety of many - Project Insight doctrine in a nutshell - is justified, and still pretending like S.H.I.E.L.D. is any different than Hydra."

The conversation wasn't making Coulson angry anymore. Ward's nonchalant manner and his pseudo-patient joviality were making the Director downright uneasy. There was something terrifying in how logical everything he said sounded. Coulson had been thinking of this man as an unpredictable and blinded by violence coward needing to be hunted down and put out of his misery, only to come back from his hunting trip and discover that Ward was waiting for him at the entrance to Coulson's own house, grinning as he played with Coulson's keys.

"Going by your expression, I take there haven't been any new mind altering developments that S.H.I.E.L.D. has learned of," the man went on contemplatively. "If you had secretly TAHITIed me when I was under sedation, you wouldn't have threatened to do it again... And you don't have the technology for the Faustus method. And yet I felt like I had strings tied to my hands, pulling me to do increasingly absurd things. I'm not a religious person by any means, but I did wonder if some superior power was yanking my chain from behind a hidden screen. I kept on hoping that someday, somehow, everything I did would end up making sense. But then Kara was dead and I was on a warpath with a bunch of tattooed skinheads for henchmen. That was the last straw."

The Quinjet shuddered and Ward looked away for a second, checking the controls. Coulson sat up a little straighter in his seat. He could tell that the autopilot had initiated the descent. He didn't know what fate awaited him at their final destination, and he was determined to put up a fierce fight meanwhile. The moment Ward had turned his back revealed that he had a gun loosely tacked under his shirt. He was bound to come closer to Coulson once the jet landed, and if he was cocky enough to do it without unholstering the pistol Coulson would use that chance to take him on.

"So what now? Are you going to tie me down, beat me up, and torture me?" he needled the man, hoping for him to become distracted. Ward simply smiled, humorless but still entertained by the older man.

"You truly don't get it, do you? Look, if you want me as a villain to your hero, then this is how it'll go down. Not with you fighting a deranged, deluded evil psycho whom you'll heroically put down to cheers from the good guy crowd. It'll start with you stepping unharmed off this plane and going to that hearing you have, and from there to the next one, explaining why you had the Guest House agents killed, those soldiers at Talbot's base shot for a Quinjet - and not with ICERs -, a senator bought, and last but not least people experimented on and mindwiped directly on your watch. It'll end with you finally acknowledging that all the ugly, horrible things that you do aren't compatible with the hero you so blindly think you are. Or are you going to pretend TAHITI was developed by Hydra?"

A short whining of the engines followed by a soft whoosh announced that they had landed. A side door opened. Several seconds passed in silence as Coulson waited, but Ward made no move to come closer to him. The fact that the man was truly allowing him to walk was slowly dawning on the Director. He stood up and walked toward the exit, careful to not turn his back on Ward. He could see an industrial area full of warehouses outside, the jet's cloaking keeping it hidden from the workers going about their day.

"The Playground is half an hour walk in that direction," Ward waved his hand from the cockpit, already preparing for the takeoff. "Time enough to wrestle with the question, who is Phil Coulson without his white horse? See, a spy agency committing shady deeds is nothing unexpected. Your predecessor was well respected precisely because he owned up to that fact. Meanwhile, your blind self-righteousness is turning away even S.H.I.E.L.D.'s most faithful fans. So if there truly is a marvelous power to be that is directing our moves - you better hope you're allowed to see the dirt on your hands before people decide they've had enough."

Coulson put one foot outside the jet, but the anger at letting the other man have the last word made him turn around and speak.

"What do you hope for?" he asked. "Closure?"

That was the first question to make a dent in Ward's facade. The shit eating grin he'd been using as his armor disappeared, replaced by a sober expression. He shook his head firmly once.

"Accountability. For everyone, not just the 'bad' guys."

 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> This fic is the result of Shine and I being Done, capital D, with SHIELD's antics... both the organization and the show. As should be obvious by now it's agenda fic in its purest form. And nope, we're not one bit sorry.
> 
> /Astrid  
> (This story is Shine's brainchild but she's away from the internet so I've been doing the posting. )


End file.
